ucandomagic
Well-Known Member
So, a first win of the season. Although our window has attracted much criticism, I felt that both BBD and Hamza immediately proved to be important additions. BBD is a genuine inverted winger – physical enough for the contact when he cuts inside. Hamza is pure commitment all over the pitch, even if he does get exposed too high up sometimes! In a repeat of the Swansea game we let them score straight from kick-off – even before finishing the GCB song this time! – and then promptly equalised almost immediately. Having perfected this skill, we repeated the quick response to conceding in the second half! Our best players were Coops – who kept us in it – McCallum – general performance and an assist – Phillips for exerting control and a superb assist – and Donovan – for relentless effort and skill and for scoring a superb winner.
I have said previously that Donovan is not ideally suited to being inverted – he lacks upper body strength, so after skilfully cutting inside he frequently gets knocked off the ball and loses possession. Cue the final 10 minutes when Shack came on for BBD and Donovan went on the left. With his strong foot on the outside in space, rather than on the inside in traffic he gets a brilliant pass from Kalvin and smashes it in from outside the defender. He has the build, speed and skillset to be a superb traditional left-winger.
Turning to my graphs, remember that based on the last decade, I am taking a 92 points target for Automatics, a 70 points target for 8th (playoffs) and an 81 points target for 4th (playoff semis). I’m only showing the first 10 matches on the graphs at the moment, so that the difference between the lines is visible.
Graph 1 plots our progress against those promotion targets, with my forecast for each match that will deliver those targets. After four games, we are still exactly on my 2 playoffs lines. I genuinely believe that we can get to 70 points and 8th place this season. My playoff lines diverge at the Norwich game – where a point would keep us on target for 8th place, but a win is the target for keeping us on the 4th place target line. Also, we are still only 2 points behind the target for a Top 2 finish!
Graph 1:
Graph 2 is the comparison with our last 2 seasons – and with 6 points we are now 6 points ahead of last season – as we had no points from our first 6 games (!) – and we are still only 2 points behind Wilder’s 92 point season in 24/25.
Graph 2:
I waited until after tonight's matches to post this, so that I could have the up-to-date table – some green at last!
On 6 points with a GD of 1 we’re now 8th equal with identical points, GD and goals scored to Birmingham– supporting my playoffs possible argument above.
League Table:
So, Norwich and Brooks at the week-end. They haven’t started as well as I thought they would – losing 3 of their 4 games - lost 3-0 to Millwall but they hammered Burnley 4-1. I can see there being quite a few goals, and a 2-2 draw or 3-2 either way. We may well need Coops to have another good night!
UTB & Slava Ukraini!
I have said previously that Donovan is not ideally suited to being inverted – he lacks upper body strength, so after skilfully cutting inside he frequently gets knocked off the ball and loses possession. Cue the final 10 minutes when Shack came on for BBD and Donovan went on the left. With his strong foot on the outside in space, rather than on the inside in traffic he gets a brilliant pass from Kalvin and smashes it in from outside the defender. He has the build, speed and skillset to be a superb traditional left-winger.
Turning to my graphs, remember that based on the last decade, I am taking a 92 points target for Automatics, a 70 points target for 8th (playoffs) and an 81 points target for 4th (playoff semis). I’m only showing the first 10 matches on the graphs at the moment, so that the difference between the lines is visible.
Graph 1 plots our progress against those promotion targets, with my forecast for each match that will deliver those targets. After four games, we are still exactly on my 2 playoffs lines. I genuinely believe that we can get to 70 points and 8th place this season. My playoff lines diverge at the Norwich game – where a point would keep us on target for 8th place, but a win is the target for keeping us on the 4th place target line. Also, we are still only 2 points behind the target for a Top 2 finish!
Graph 1:
Graph 2 is the comparison with our last 2 seasons – and with 6 points we are now 6 points ahead of last season – as we had no points from our first 6 games (!) – and we are still only 2 points behind Wilder’s 92 point season in 24/25.
Graph 2:
I waited until after tonight's matches to post this, so that I could have the up-to-date table – some green at last!
On 6 points with a GD of 1 we’re now 8th equal with identical points, GD and goals scored to Birmingham– supporting my playoffs possible argument above.
League Table:
So, Norwich and Brooks at the week-end. They haven’t started as well as I thought they would – losing 3 of their 4 games - lost 3-0 to Millwall but they hammered Burnley 4-1. I can see there being quite a few goals, and a 2-2 draw or 3-2 either way. We may well need Coops to have another good night!
UTB & Slava Ukraini!
